Transit study tracks stimulus

Politicians and proponents said all of the right things about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act when it was enacted, but that wasn't enough for Policy Matters Ohio.

The nonprofit policy research institute decided it wanted to take it's own look into the ARRA's impact on the state, with special regard to highways, roads, rails and public transportation. The results were unveiled Tuesday when the Cleveland-based organization released a new study, "The Road to Recovery: Analysis of Federal Stimulus Funding for Transportation Projects in Ohio."

By and large, the report looks at the distribution patterns of 79 percent of the $1.38 billion the state is slated to receive for federal investment in roads, rails and bridges, Metropolitan Planning Organization funding for those items, and public transit spending. The remainder of those funds goes toward investment in airports, maritime infrastructure and other programs.

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"In a year of severe shortfall in state revenues, was stimulus funding distributed to plug funding holes, or to specifically help distressed local economies?" the Policy Matters staff asked in its executive summary. "Did Ohio use these flexible transportation funds to maximize job creation, using evidence that some investments creates more jobs than others?"

In answering its first question, the study found that state and local distribution of the funds did target economic distress in core cities and poor rural counties. But the study considered Lake and Geauga counties as two of the state's 22 counties with the strongest economies where about 18 percent of Ohio's population resides. These areas will receive about 7.5 percent of the federal transit and transportation stimulus investment, compared to 38 percent for moderate economies like Cuyahoga and Summit counties and 24 percent for lagging counties and 33 percent for distressed ones.

With respect to the maximization of job creation, Policy Matters says the state needs much improvement. At the study's close, seven recommendations are made, but the second reads, "Invest more in public transit."

"If (the Ohio Department of Transportation) had devoted just 3 percent of its stimulus funds for roads to public transit, the collective red ink anticipated for 2009 by the state's 15 transit authorities could have been eliminated and further fare increases or service cuts avoided," the recommendation reads. "Moreover, public transit creates about 31 percent more jobs from public investment than new highway construction; such an investment would have maximized direct job creation of the ARRA funds."

Laketran General Manager Raymond Jurkowski and Laketran Trustee Donna C. McNamee have argued those points and more for more than a year, the latter as a member of Ohio's 21st Century Transportation Priorities Task Force. The Policy Matters report also drove home another point Jurkowski sometimes struggles conveying to the public -- that the government mandates that stimulus and other federal aid is used for capital projects and day-to-day operations.

Marianne Freed, ODOT's administrator of transit, however, told Policy Matters that the government recently lifted that restriction and is now allowing systems to change grant requests so that funding could be used for operations. Still, it could be a while before public transportation users and taxpayers see a difference.

"It takes time to reallocate federal funding," Freed said in the study. "The grant application must be changed and the plan must be changed. This all takes time.

"Services continue to be cut and fares raised as the systems work through access to funds."

In Lake County, Jurkowski two weeks ago announced that Laketran is asking its board to postpone any fare increases until 2011.